They Progress Report

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This European shooter will task you with battling spectral phantoms and not-so-spectral machines.

By Jason Ocampo

They was one of the upcoming games that caught our eye at last year's Games Convention in Leipzig. It's basically a sleek shooter that puts you in the ruins of London, so it's a bit similar to last year's Hellgate: London in that regard. However, this is a pure shooter, as opposed to Hellgate's mix of action and role-playing statistics, and in They you're battling an invading army of machines that are controlled by phantoms. The vision of giant mechanical beings with spectral tendrils left a strong impression on us, and we finally got an update on the game last week.

First, let's note that They is still deep in development, and the game is scheduled for release next year. That means that a lot of what we saw is still very early, and there's a lot that still needs to be determined, such as the possibility of vehicles. What we do know is that They is set in the near future. The story is that the War on Terror has escalated and gone global, and cities are battlegrounds. Just when everything is settling down, an army of machines invades. You play as a British soldier sent back to London, and you'll battle the machines and uncover the mystery of They. Though the story takes place around 2012 or so, we didn't see any modern day weapons or equipment. There's a very strong sci-fi current in They, so you're armed with weapons and vehicles that might not seem out of place in games like Unreal.

Something's not quite right here.

The kicker is that the many different robots that you battle are basically being driven by mysterious specters you can barely see. Take out a machine and you may see a slight shimmer in the air above it, as the specter flies away, perhaps on its way to hopping into another machine. Who or what are these specters? That's going to be one of the big revelations in the game, but whatever they are, they do look cool. Machines range from bipedal, humanoid figures and fast, wall-crawling spider bots, to large tripods that sort of look like a cross between those found in War of the Worlds and the walkers of Half-Life.

Of course the best move would be to target the phantoms instead of the robots. Doing so will result in a dramatic difference, because if you can kill or drive a phantom away, the robot it is controlling will revert to its standard AI programming, and if you've ever played any kind of computer game before, you know that AI bots can be pretty dumb. So instead of moving quickly or seeking cover, the machine might just stand and fire at you.

At your disposal is going to be a single, flexible weapon for the most part. The idea is that in most games you have to carry around eight to 10 different weapons, but what if you could combine them into one? Enter the weapon tuning system, otherwise known as "pimp my weapon" (a rather bad name in our opinion). Basically, the weapon tuning system means your gun has four swappable components to it, so you customize it many different ways. Need more firepower? Swap in a grenade launcher. Need more accuracy? Then replace the barrel with a sniper barrel. The customization even extends to the cosmetic realm, as you can create all sorts of different paint schemes and even decals, much like fans of the Xbox 360's Forza Motorsport 2 can use basic shapes to create incredibly detailed images.

Robots and ghostly specters.

In fact, most of what we saw was basically the same as from Leipzig eight months ago, but back then, the game was in a barely working state. A good deal of progress has been made, and now those same scenes are completely playable. They is powered by a proprietary and original graphics engine that looks comparable to the latest Unreal Engine technology. The game will also have a fairly robust physics system, though the physics-based puzzles won't require you to have to move weights around to move a teeter-totter or anything like that.

There's still a lot about They that we don't know, but since the game is so far away there's no huge hurry for the developers to reveal more quite yet. For now, They remains a shooter that is on our radar for 2009, and we'll keep you updated.